In an automatic armature winding machine such as the doubleflier type winding machine disclosed in George et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,172 which issued to the Assignee of the present invention, it is common to wind armatures having commutator bars with hooks or tangs around which lead wires are wrapped after coils are wound in the slots of the armature core. When such a machine is used for winding certain types of armatures, for example, automotive armatures which require a relative heavy gauge wire, each lead wire is connected after the winding of a coil to a commutator tang which is usually within the span of the coil so that the wire is not wrapped substantially around the armature shaft in the area between the commutator and the core.
In order to assure that the wire extending from a wound coil to the flier connects with the proper commutator tang, a wire deflector member or finger is pivotally mounted on each of the winding chucks or forms which grip the core, for example, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,598. As illustrated in FIGS. 7 and 8 of this patent, the wire deflector fingers are pivoted or actuated by corresponding vertical pins located under the winding forms. The actuating pins are elevated vertically to engage corresponding slides within the forms when it is desired to pivot the fingers inwardly to deflect the lead wires around the appropriate commutator tangs, and the deflector fingers pivot outwardly away from the commutator when the vertical actuating pins are retracted downwardly.
As apparent from the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,598, when the vertical actuating pins are elevated to pivot the wire deflector fingers, the support for the pins projects into the path of the rotary fliers, thus requiring that the fliers be stopped in precise predetermined positions before the actuating pins are elevated. The precise stopping of the fliers requires a more complex control system and may increase the total time required for the winding operation. In addition, the mechanism for actuating the wire deflector fingers is relatively complex and must be built into the winding forms which are selected according to the size of the armatures being wound. In addition, pieces of scrap wire, which are produced at the winding station, may lodge within the actuating mechanism for the deflector fingers and prevent dependable operation.